“The China Moment” of music industry is coming soon
Brand, culture and content communication are indispensable.

“Now，I would like to ask a question, raise your hand if you agree:nowadays, is it 2018. When 2020 is coming, will China become the largest music market in the world ? What about in 2025? in 2030? And how about in 2050?”

On June 28, in Beijing. After listening to the conference between Chinese and the international music industry all day, Jasper Doant, CEO of Branded Company, which has been observing the pan-entertainment ecology in Asia since 2001, asked the following questions to the guests and audience who attending the Tencent Music Connects global Music Industrial Summit.

Andy Wu, the vice President of Tencent music entertainment group company, and a small group of audience raised their hands when referring to “2020”. When it mentions in “2025,” more people raise their hands; When “2030” was mentioned, most of the audience firmly raised their hands.

Perhaps from the perspective of this activity, Jasper mentioned this question just for the consideration of on-site interaction, but most of the music industry practitioners involved in the meeting are cautious and serious in the face of this problem.

The question is not whether “Chinese music will become the top one in the world”, but “when Chinese music will become the top one in the world”. This question is important to think about it. It is believed that this proposition is only a matter of time, not just a hypothesis. It can be seen that when we talk about music in China, we are confident enough from facing a lot of problems in the past and into the boom of the industry for nowadays.

This is also why the Tencent Music Connects global Music industry summit (TMC) chosen held in 2018 as its important value.

Tencent Music Connects sponsored by Tencent Music entertainment group company, China Association of Performing Arts, the Music Copyright Society of China and Music Industry Promotion Committee as guidance and the Chinese Music Group co., LTD., provided strategic support.

What is the current development of music market in China? How does international market look upon the rise of China music market? How will China music market interact with the world to create more value and vitality in the future? These are the most concerned topics of current domestic and foreign practitioners in this meeting. The TMC summit also provides answers and references for the music industry and people related to it from different perspectives.

Interpretation of music industry in China:

the Long Tail Effect is obvious, with huge potential

What is the development stage of music industry in China? Xu Hongli, secretary general of Music Industry Promotion Committee, and zhang Fengyan, associate professor of School of Music and Recording Arts of Communication University of China respectively summarized and interpreted the current situation of music industry in China in the speech of “music industry’s effect on urban development” and “China power and future“.

First of all, the culture has become an important element for China’s future economic and social development. Music Industry Long Tail Effect is obvious, while, the structure and policy still need to be shaped. Xu Hongli said that compared with developed countries, domestic cultural industry GDP is still lagging behind. Taking the U.S.’ cultural industry GDP as an example, it accounts for 11.3%, while the figure in China is only 4.14% in 2017. However, from 2004 to 2016, the GDP of China’s cultural industry has increased six tuple, from five hundred billion to more than three trillion.

On the music industry, the current classification attributed to its domestic news publishing, cultural industry did not become a separate category labeled columns in national statistics. The reason is that although the Chinese music industry is growing rapidly and the long tail effect is obvious, the current structural changes are frequent, the development data is not stable, and more investment and development time is needed.

The good news is that the culture industry, especially the music industry has received national attention. Last year, the general office of CCCPC and the General Offices of the State Council issued the outline of the China’s 13th Five-year Plan for Cultural Development and Reform, which clearly proposed to include the development of music industry in the national cultural industry project. During the two sessions last year, Xu Peidong proposed the Music Industry Promotion Act to the National People’s Congress.

Xu Hongli, Secretary General of Music Industry Promotion Committee, said:‘it took 10 years from the making a proposal to the final promulgation of China’s Film Industry Promotion Act. In fact the Music Industry Promotion Act legally support for music industry development.

Second, Chinese music is the digital music industry. Currently, China has the highest and largest number of digital music users in the world. According to the IFPI report, in 2017, the number of digital music users has reached 503 million, accounting for 68% of the total number of netizens in China. The usage ration of digital music accounted for 96.34% in China, and the digital music income ranks the first in the world among the top 50 countries.

Third, the development space and potential of China’s music industry is enormous, in a state of simmering. Zhang Fengyan said that from the experience of global industrial economic data, when a country’s per capita GDP reaches 10,000 US dollars, the cultural industry is going to flourish. For example, when Japan’s per capita GDP exceeds 10,000 US dollars, the service industry accounted for 58%. At this time, the men’s idol company Johnnys was established and became backbone entertainment industry in Japan; The popularity of H.O.T., a group owned by South Korea’s SM Entertainment company, only took place when its per capita GDP reached 10,000 US dollars. China’s per capita GDP has reached 8,000 US dollars, close to the critical point, predicting that the music industry in China will soon boom.

“Almost no country values education as much as China does,” said zhang Fengyan, associate professor of School of Music and Recording Arts of Communication University of China, “There are have 40 million children play piano, 30 million children play violin, and plenty of other instrument players. Furthermore, there are 11 music professional institutions such as Central Conservatory of Music and Shanghai Conservatory of Music, as well as a large number of online music education companies to continually cultivated potential musicians for China…Also, we would like to be deeply grateful for China that it has five thousand years of cultural accumulation, giving us, Chinese descendants, a opportunity to create and discovery more than 200 Musical Instruments, 360 kinds of traditional opera music, and various folk songs, which have become national elements for Chinese musicians to do innovative development”.

Chinese brand culture building, the content of the shape of ourself

As a new generation of globalization, many young fans in China are attracted to music band, such as European music band, American DIVA and others. They are very familiar with their pop songs, drawing the young’s attention to be groupie and listening to euramerican popular pop music has become a unique style of “cool” However, in recent years, “cool” music has been defined more “Chinese”. More nationalized pop and independent music make music fans feel more sense of belonging.

On the one hand, people try to make changes and breakthroughs on traditional music content side. Fan Guobin, General manager of China Record Music Group CO., LTD., once said in the speech of ” Explore and Breakthroughs of China Record Music Culture ” that since last year, China Record Music Group Company has seen the huge potential of music industry in China and made the decision of business breakthrough, such as cooperating with Tencent to develop the APP related to listening opera and vinyl record, building China Record Music museums, expanding cultural tourism projects in Kulangsu and other places, as well as upgrading and renovation of national music industrial park, etc.

For CHINA RECORD GROUP CO.,LTD,, which has a history of 110 years and can be regarded as an effective model for exploration of music industrial change in China, the “reconstruction” of brand and content is a test of the aesthetic and values of the traditional music content. Considering the music industry situation, it is the responsibility of aesthetic guidance for the public. Therefore, Fan Guobin proposed that the goal of china Record Group Company is to rebuild the content, the artistry and ideology of music, and the moral responsibility of the community.

FanGuoBin，General Manager of China Record Group CO., LTD., and the Proprietor of China drama press, said, “we have talked about the music industry enough. Now, it is time for us to take action. Music industry is needed output value, enable, andGDP growth. But, the current situation of music industry is too nervous, too tired and too exhausted. We are almost trapped by those conditions… I think we need to remember that the best music has to focus on its artistry, literariness and critical thinking.”

For the domestic companies that focus on live performance and aim at young people, on the other hand, music globalization in the present moment is not a big issue for Chinese Indie Music development.，CaoTai Music CEO and MIDI performance company CEO, ShanWei, as well as Liu Zhao, the founder of Stallion Era Company’s CEO Liu Zhao said, “under the perspective of multinational culture, the multinational music industry sector from the perspective of China indicates that the overseas tour of domestic independent musicians has become more frequent and regular, and has gradually gained global attention on iTunes, Spotify and other rankings.

How to make the output channel of Chinese music content healthier, content more differentiated and the hot spot of characteristic that needs more attention at present.

Depends on content, nationalization is an important label of Chinese musician presented themselves before. However, with the development of music globalization and the improvement of fans of aesthetic about the music, “Chinese style” is no longer suited to become the main features. Chinese musicians need more with the internationally artistic quality on music and on behalf of their artistic value. Thus, they can get recognition that brings the Chinese culture into the international platform.

Ge Fei, CEO of CaoTai Music, said, “there will be no lingual boundary between music and different countries in the future because in one world cultural integration will generate the new content based on globalization situation. We do not need other people to accept our culture. Also, different cultures from different nation do no have to recognize by us. I think that any kind of culture has its own ability to spread with its own ideological form.”

Liu Zhao, founder and CEO of Stallion Era, said: “I think that it is true to argue that the nation is the world, but the world is ours.”

Shan Wei, CEO of MIDI Performance Company: “in fact, from the perspective of internationalization, we find that it is difficult to define the which one is Chinese musician and foreign musician in them, for now no matter overseas bands or domestic bands, Many music groups are very international, usually with different people to form a band. Therefore, we can’t say which culture they represent. The combination of Chinese and western is more and more common.

Where does music go? The discussion of overseas opportunity

It is reported that the TMC has more than 300 guests, representing more than 100 different music companies from more than 20 different countries and regions such as the United States, Britain, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, India, etc. In addition to the development of the music industry in different directions, overseas guests also shared their own business observations in China and provided the latest feedback from the Chinese music industry in overseas markets.

For the global music industry, China already has a huge content-paying market based on tremendous mobile users. However, China’s music industry can rebound from a beating, relying on the way of thinking of different industry ecological logic when cooperating with the overseas’ music industry.

In the “China Welcomes the Global Music Industry” forum, Warner Music’s COO Andy Ma in Greater China Regina said that after five or six years of development, Tencent Music Entertainment headed the the music ecosystem in the Chinese music industry, deeply affected Chinese music fans. ‘Listening to the music” is not only a behavior of ‘listening’, but also deeply connected to the various way of listening, such as short video, live broadcast and karaoke, which involves the social media choice of young people, their life attitude and their personal aesthetics of music at present. All these certain fields are commercialized, which is an important reason why China’s music industry can catch up with the global scale.

For overseas companies that want to access and influence the vast and emerging market of China, they also need to accept the “ecological logic” to better serve the new music users.

Shawn Paltiel, Sony Music, Director, Insights & Marketing said, “for international enterprises, said we recognize that China’s market and culture with the west is not the same. The west has a history of more than 60 years of popular music. However, the development of Chinese pop music in the past 15 years is to digest the western development in the past 60 years, which has been very difficult. And the younger generation in China is different from their parents, so we need to think about how to develop in this different market in China.”

At present, China’s music industry is in the stage of rapid development. Under the focus of globalization, needed more overseas companies and resources to help China’s music market to develop better internally, and needed a platform for overseas to have a deeper understanding of China’s music market. Tencent Music Connects global Music Industrial summit has created a global open channel for domestic practitioners. Starting from the industrial chain of each link, it helps China’s music market accelerate its growth into a more international Music market.

Beijing is just the first stop, next, TMC will successively held in Singapore, Shanghai, Chengdu, Shenzhen and other places. Their goal is to explore science and technology, culture, education, and music industry, helping Chinese and western music cultural exchange and accelerating Chinese music demonstrate to the world.